A community of NPR critics monitoring NPR for its corporatist, Pentagon friendly, pro-US foreign policy coverage of the news.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Q Tips and Call

So far this "team" blog has been more of a duo effort: goopDoggy and Mytwords. We had hoped for at least 4 writers. Any takers? Email Mytwords if you're interested - click the Mytwords profile under "Contributors" in the sidebar to get in contact.

15 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Benedict:

Member of the Nazi Youth

(Following his 14th birthday in 1941, Ratzinger was conscripted into the Hitler Youth, as membership was required for all 14-year old German boys after December 1939,[8] but was an unenthusiastic member and refused to attend meetings)

Member of German Army

In 1943, while still in seminary, he was drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps as Luftwaffenhelfer.[9] Ratzinger then trained in the German infantry, but a subsequent illness precluded him from the usual rigours of military duty. As the Allied front drew closer to his post in 1945, he deserted back to his family's home in Traunstein after his unit had ceased to exist, just as American troops established their headquarters in the Ratzinger household. As a German soldier, he was put in a POW camp but was released a few months later at the end of the war in the summer of 1945.

(above from WIKI but it is sourced easily at other sites)

opponent of liberation theology

The influence of liberation theology diminished after liberation theologians using Marxist concepts were admonished by the Roman Curia's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. The Vatican documents criticize certain strains of Liberation Theology for focusing on institutional dimensions of sin to the exclusion of the individual; and for undermining church authority by identifying the church hierarchy as members of the privileged class

Widening sex abuse scandal

I suspect that every member of the Nazi Youth was "forced" and every German soldier "deserted" as the Allies (especially Russian forces) neared Berlin. After all, the Germans claimed they thought the concentration camps were making soap.

Blair: "We're not out of the woods yet, but we're on the path out. And this did not happen by chance. It happened by choice. This required leadership and Brown supplied it."

Vicki Barker: "A long serving, long suffering number two. Determined to stand or fall without the help of his more charismatic predecessor. Historian Antony Howard hears echos with then vice president Al Gore ten years ago."

Antony Howard: "If he brought Bill Clinton in, Bill Clinton is a marvelous campaigner, [unintelligible] now Gore would have suddenly been made to look worse than he is - I think there may be an element of that."

VB: "Of course Gore didn't reach the top job, Gordon Brown did. But not via the voting booth but in a midterm hand over of power within the Labour Party. This election will be the first time Brown himself will face the British people. The Polls are punishingly close. Gordon Brown needs Tony Blair, but what did it cost him to admit that."

The first time I heard this story there was a comment towards the end, saying, "Of course, Al Gore didn't win the election." That was edited out the next time the story aired. Amusing. All this careful repairing of Blair's reputation is, no doubt, part of repairing Bush's reputation too - and that of the Bush dynasty. Watch for Jeb in 2012.

From T Bone Burnett to T Bone Pickens, Scott Simon was flushably wipable this morning. The gratuitous and lurid tabloid inquiry as to whether Roxana Saberi fears for her life because Iranian spies "are all over the world" and could find her and kill her anytime, anywhere, was, well, just about as ridiculous as asking the author of Lunatic Express how he could risk is 17 year-old daughters life by traveling on a bus in Peru, which was almost as ridiculous as the advertisement for IPad and T Bone Pickens, chair of BP Capital. "People would like to think that off the east coast of the US you would have another Gulf of Mexico. [] There's not 14 billion barrels there." "We're importing daily 14 million barrels of oil [] two thirds of what we consume [] one quarter of the world's supply. That's not sustainable."

SS: But it's interesting, Mr. Pickens, I would hazard a guess that the president and his administration are grateful to have your verbal support, but I must say the arguments you're citing to explain your support might not give them any comfort at all."

TBP: Now if they're counting on imports...the president clearly said, "no oil will be imported from the mid-east in ten years" So it's very clear he knows what he's saying, but I have not seen a plan yet that's going to solve the problem.

SS: Let me ask you as someone who has invested in the future of wind energies, does a decision like this, given the scale of commitments it represents, detract or distract from investing in alternative energies?

TBP: I don't think he said anything that hurts wind energy. Pass legislation to get wind and solar kicked off - it's moving slowly, but there will be, I think, legislation passed [] with a renewable energy standard and with that you will require ability in the US to have alternative supplies of power [] I think that's going to move along fine, but if you want to reduce the 5 billion barrels that we import from OPEC, and I think in that case you're actually buying oil from he enemy and I think you're probably paying for both sides of a war, and I don't think that's smart for us to do that. And we do have a resource in America that we could use. If we don't get on our own resource, when we have the opportunity to do it, this generation could go down as possibly the dumbest crowd that ever came down the street.

Inasmuch as Simon is emblematic of "this generation," Pickens may have a point. Since Pickens' hedge funds are heavily invested in companies such as Haliburton, this would have been a good opportunity for Simon to follow up with questions like, "Well what do you know about who benefits from funding both sides of these wars?" and so on. Nope. End of discussion.

Yeah, bd, it was like the Pentagon got word that this blog is dying and took the opportunity to run naked through the streets of DC yelling "Eureka!"

The wiki-leaks story was followed by a Carol Burnett story, just to be sure the "liberal" audience got back on the laugh track, i suspect. I'm surprised Carol wasn't cajoled into describing how she'd given the Tarzan yell from that helicopter and that's what got the boys so riled up.

'Sweet. I predicted over at Greenwald's blog that NPR would only report this on their "blog" and it might be mentioned on one of their talk shows. You're proving me right, NPR. Keep up the predictable work.'

So, in my comment agreeing with the above comment, I added: 'The headline to this blog post shows how NPR tries to justify this attack on two reporters and children and (as usual) becomes a mouthpiece for the Pentagon. I cannot believe the comments on here. Check out Democracy Now! today - Greenwald was on with the Julian Assange (Wikileaks).'http://www.democracynow.org/

Well, fancy that! First time for me: My comment was removed in minutes - with the usual "An NPR moderator has removed this comment because it does not adhere to the discussion guidelines."

I have no idea why, but I do stand proud today for some strange reason. It's almost like coming out! Ha!

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